Pentecost Issue #5 - May 2020
Call for Submissions Deadline May 1, 2020
Ordinary Space, your theology nerd fanzine for pop culture junkies & justice dreamers, is working on a special, nonessential, isolation/quarantine “Quaranzine.”
We seek your communique, your manifesto, your careless scribbles & insights from inside your private monastery/ashram/hunkered-down bunker.
What have you been reading, listening to, watching, playing, doing, and so forth to help you offer reflections & revelations, viral critiques & virtual caretaking? What have you received from this present crisis & all the emerging narratives?
Specifically we seek: stories, essays, poems, rants, & two-dimensional reproducible drawings, collages, more. As always, we look to land somewhere at the intersection of: theology, pop culture, & social justice. What have you got?
Deadline: May 1, 2020.
Ordinary Space, your theology nerd fanzine for pop culture junkies & justice dreamers, is working on a special, nonessential, isolation/quarantine “Quaranzine.”
We seek your communique, your manifesto, your careless scribbles & insights from inside your private monastery/ashram/hunkered-down bunker.
What have you been reading, listening to, watching, playing, doing, and so forth to help you offer reflections & revelations, viral critiques & virtual caretaking? What have you received from this present crisis & all the emerging narratives?
Specifically we seek: stories, essays, poems, rants, & two-dimensional reproducible drawings, collages, more. As always, we look to land somewhere at the intersection of: theology, pop culture, & social justice. What have you got?
Deadline: May 1, 2020.
-- the issue originally planned for Pentecost has been
postponed for Advent. its call is here:
Theme: Can I Get a Witness? Engaging Prophetic
Art, Music, and Writing Around Race, Identity, and Representation
Special Two Year Anniversary Edition
In an essay from 1962 titled “The Creative Process”
James Baldwin mused on the work of the artist within a culture and society. He
noted that while a society must assume that it is stable, the artist knows
differently. There is nothing stable under the sun and the artist’s work is
never conservative but is revelatory and disruptive of the status quo. He says,
“The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to
the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.”
We seek to take seriously Baldwin’s description and
challenge in every issue of Ordinary Space; it informs our consideration of pop
culture as art. For Ordinary Space’s fifth issue, we invite a conversation
around the prophetic art, music, and writing that engages issues of race,
identity and representation in our current culture.
We invite a variety of voices and perspectives in
dialogue with the intersection of pop culture, religion, and issues of justice
in relation to race and representation. Where do you see this intersection in
popular and prophetic art, music, and writing? What is the role and/or relation
of artistic creations in pop culture to the work of justice?
Potential points of contact could include but are
not limited to:
- The portrayal of white supremacy and the struggle against it in HBO’s Watchmen.
- The performative power of representation in relation to justice and/or religion in the work of artists like Beyonce, Lizzo, Kendrick Lamar, Solange, and others.
- The subversive power of collective memory in documentary films like Amazing Grace and I Am Not Your Negro and 13th among others
- Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us
- Identity and representation in new television shows and remakes: Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, One Day at a Time, Party of Five, etc.
- The intersections of white evangelical culture with Kanye West’s “Sunday Service” and Jesus is King.
- Protest music, religion, and justice during the 60s and 70s: Nina Simone, Buffy St. Marie, Odetta, and others
- The literary work output of writers like James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler and others
Note: The above
prompts are merely suggestive and not exhaustive of the options that could
address the issue’s theme.
We also welcome submissions outside of these themes as
long as they fit with the Zine’s emphasis on the intersection of pop culture,
religion, and themes of justice.
We invite submissions of essays, poetry, or visual
art. Ideal essay submissions will be between 800 and 1500 words although we
will consider shorter and longer submissions. Please send submissions by November 1,
2020 to ordinaryspacezine@gmail.com
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